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Tom Engelhardt, creator of Tomdispatch.com and author of The United States of Fear, discusses how the Bush administration’s version of the American Dream is dying on the vine; the dull-eyed Obama administration bureaucrats who have unthinkingly carried on the plans of radical visionaries from the Bush era; how Hillary Clinton’s imperial hubris makes her immune from logical contradictions (e.g.: “US forces are in the Persian Gulf to prevent foreign interference”); and why the Iraq War has become a clear defeat for the US, despite the middling security detail and giant embassy that remain.

Tom Engelhardt created and runs the Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. He is the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, and of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing, as well as a collection of his Tomdispatch interviews, Mission Unaccomplished. Each spring he is a Teaching Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

' The Obama people don't have the same self-confidence…' No, but they can sure lie. They don't even run things, the 'experts' do, our National Security-military revolving door experts who only see contracts and power. Not to forget the Zionist hijacking of both Congress and Senate. And of course there is the 'we are living in end times' foolishness which takes us to the realm of superstition and shadow consciousness, the consciousness which always leads to total self-destruction if it is not forcefully suppressed in time.

What might work is if the US air force were to bomb the US. That way the corporations would be mollified; Haliburton and Bechtel could begin much needed reconstruction projects, Blackwater could be put in charge of counter insurgency and security..
It's a win win situation for the US that would probably also meet with the rest of the world's approval.

Why don´t you use the "C" word? A nation of frightened people is a nation of cowards, no? It looks that way to me. Any frightened group who will permit such heinous crimes to be committed in their name and to permit their own freedoms to be taken away from them, are indeed cowards, cowards with a capital "C".

Why do you excuse our leadership just because you believe they act out of ignorance? Does it matter one iota if they are ignorant or evil planners? Come on guys, we´re talking about authorized mass murder of over a million people, the displacement of over four million, and the torture of who knows how many! Whatever happened to; “Ignorance of the law is no excuse”? We are talking about a leadership of self-declared war criminals – just listen to the Republican debate. Regardless of how many lawyers they get to interpret the laws for them, the laws do not change and it doesn´t change the fact that those who order and commit those illegal and immoral acts are as sick and evil as any of those convicted at the Nuremberg Trials. I would place citizens who support them in the very same category, just as we did the German people after WW-II. What in God´s name has happened to the country?

One more comment: We already have a giant stimulus package abroad – it´s called “Outsourcing to China.”

"Richard Perle, the likes of people with such narrow vision as Richard Perle, pushing us to war with Iraq, as though we could just do this every day from now on, and have no consequences, never face economic challenges…"

Phil Giraldi :

"America’s political culture, increasingly on a permanent war footing, is fueled by the fact that the status quo is painless for the country’s elites, almost none of whom have children in the military and many of whom actually benefit personally from the military industrial complex that exists symbiotically with the unending conflict. They are immune to the consequences of their bad decisions."

What Tom is missing is the fact that Empire have changed color and the new vision is about yet another religious theorcracy then democracy.., that is because there never were a democracy nor it will be ever as long as democracy is practised in falisfied terms and is about militarism – police states both at home and internationaly. Every US president for last 60 years have war under its name.., that means that she or he needs to follow the rule of US militarism regime or else.., otherwise all and every presidents been the pupet to the system doing what the system been telling it to do.

“Empire USA has changed, for the new illusion is just another religious theocracy, still void of democracy.”

STATE RELIGION
Nature’s God has created all men of equal intelligence with the rich, which gives the rich an unalienable right to compete and win all in business. For nature’s God gives the most wealth and most valuable real estate to those the most righteous. Therefore, the upper half of society may be the voting majority and rule all in democracy.

The real issue, do politicians control High Society, or does our rich nobility control politicians?

FACTS
(1) Over 90% of inherited wealth in America passes from father to son in rich nobility family dynasties. It being permanent wealth and referred to by the rich as “old money.”

(2) Over 95% of those in political office will not pass on any type of political influence to a relative. It being temporary power that terminates from one generation to the next.

(3) In Washington, most all who hold public office were hand picked and campaign funded by the super rich, rich investors like the small group that owns the controlling interest of GE Corp., the world’s largest manufacturer of war materials and owner of the NBC media giant.

(4) The amount of wealth that one politician, even Obama, could somehow pass into the hands of a super-rich campaign donor, surely it would be less then 1% of the fortune owned by a man of rich nobility, making it near impossible for a politician to have any power or control over those of High Society.